


Our Lady Of Death (And All Of Her Friends)

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 16:00:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1121794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a girl on the screen</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Lady Of Death (And All Of Her Friends)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [traceExcalibur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/traceExcalibur/gifts).



> My prompt was for ignored aspects of the Rose/Kanaya relationship, and somehow it turned into "what genre have i never seen them in" so you get an overly angsty college au, which i only ever see the boys in. So, there is alcohol and fashion, but they aren't the focus. and also, it's pretty deliberately bad, but that's because i rarely see badfic of the two of them, especially of the angsty variety. so, brace yourselves for poor pacing, flowery language, and angst for angst's sake
> 
> triggers for suicide and ableism

She’s on screen now for the first time, all white against her black clothes and the black backdrop, and Kanaya wants to scream. She takes one step on dainty feet towards the ladder, and it echoes. Another step. Three steps and she’s at the ladder, and three more and she’s reached the top. There’s a microphone there, hooked up to an amplifier at the ladder’s base, and a rope dangling behind her head, strung up over one of the auditorium’s support beams. She bends down, grabs the mic, and stands back up.

Kanaya reaches for her phone, a quick, abortive movement, but her hands are too shaky. She tries again, successfully. She has to type in her password three times. 

On screen, she is speaking again as Kanaya dials nine-one-one. The words filter through the speakers as if she’s underwater, and her lips, purple-black like a bruise, are moving slow in her face.

“Hello. My name is Rose Lalonde, and I’m the first person to beat tentacleTherapist’s challenge.”

She drops the mic, reaches for the rope, and begins to tie a noose.

 

She loves Vriska first, loves her in eighth grade jumping off the whale watch to touch a humpback. She loves her bruised and bloody and screaming on the phone that her mother’s going to kill her and meaning it. She loves her most of all when she needs her. Sometimes she wonders if that makes her sick, loving being needed that much. So she follows Vriska everywhere, follows her to high school and back alleys and finally university.

She is following Vriska to the party now, stepping in her footprints as she summits the hill, careful not to get mud on her shoes. When she reaches the top, Vriska’s already at the base, tromping off towards the beta frat where the freshmen are being hazed in her stolen boots, her pirate coat snapping behind her in the wind. She reaches the party, but Vriska’s already disappeared into the crowd.

This is not the first time this has happened. She looks around at the crowd, all dancing underneath the “Happy Halloween” sign in their bright costumes. Mixed in with them are hundreds of teen boys in drag, each vying for admission to the beta fraternity. On stage the band is playing lady gaga covers. They’re all in drag, and all but the lead singer look awful in their costumes.

Ugly Sexy Cop plays base, Ugly Sexy Nurse is on keyboard, Ugly Sexy Cheerleader is playing the drums. The front man is dressed as Jessica Rabbit, and, unlike the rest of them, he has shaved his legs. He croons along to the beat, grinding his hips against the mic stand. He is white, not just Caucasian but dead stark white like death itself, and beautiful in the way boys are not supposed to be. He is wearing sunglasses. She does not want to kiss him, has never wanted to kiss any man, but she does want to speak to him. He finishes the song, and bows, red wig falling to the floor, revealing hair as colorless as his skin. Somebody whips a pair of boxer briefs at his face. It’s Vriska.

The boy gets off the stage with another dramatic flourish. She follows him out the back door, and stops dead in her tracks.

There’s a girl, equally as pale, kneeling on the grass and retching, retching, retching up nothing. The boy rushes up to her, kneels down beside her, puts one hand on her back and rubs in soothing circles, chanting under his breath rapidly.

“Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit not again goddamnit Rose I told you you can’t do this not to me not again.”

Kanaya coughs. The boy looks up, dragging Rose to her feet and breathing deeply. Rose looks up. The whites of her eyes are bloodshot, her pupils blown, but her irises are an electric purple that makes Kanaya sick to her stomach. She wonders why she’s not the one puking on the ground. 

Rose groans. “Light”

She leans over and tries to claw the sequins off Kanaya’s shirt. Kanaya steps back, and Rose reels forward, hand landing in the vomit as she tries to catch herself. She reels back in horror.

“Eggs. Dave, Dave, are there eggs?”

The boy, Dave, sighs. “for the last fucking time you’ve never puked an egg in your life, so shut the fuck up and let me drag you back home.”

He attempts to hoist her up in his skinny arms, and fails spectacularly. He looks up, sunglasses askew, and Kanaya sees that his eyes are red like apples and blood and roses. He glares.

“You wanna fucking make something of it?”

Kanaya shirks. “No, it’s just… you might find that a little easier without the stilettos.”

He kicks off his shoes in silence, and tries again. He’s got her half up before he drops her. He waves, and Kanaya sees he’s got a house made of four blocks and a triangle tattooed on his wrist.

“You gonna fucking stand there like a moron or you gonna help?”

She picks rose up like a baby. She can’t be taller than 5’1, or weigh more than a hundred pounds, and she half expects to find Dave punching the wall to reassert his masculinity, but when she looks over he’s just sighing in relief.

“If you’ll carry her, I’ll show you to her dorm.”

She carries Rose, and Dave carries his heels, and they traipse off. Rose lives in the single dorms, and when they arrive Dave stops her at the door.

“She’s a real fucking slob, so you might not want to go in.”

“Do you want to drag her to bed.”

“Fuck you too man.”

Rose’s room is, in fact a dump, from what Kanaya can tell. She stumbles over at least three books before finding the bed, and only when she’s dropped rose into it does she remember her Vriska-sitting duties.

“I’ve got to go.”

She waves goodbye, leaving Dave to sit in the dark with his drunken sister. 

When she gets back to her dorm, the room’s a mess and there’s a tied up condom in the center of her bed like some sort of ugly gift from cat to owner, and the bathtub’s running. She throws out the condom, proof Vriska got home safely without her, and lies down on her bed and lets insomnia engulf her.

She thinks, for one deranged moment, of calling her mother, or maybe her older sister. Of telling them that Vriska’s fucking boys in her bed again, and begging for advice. She reaches under her pillow for her phone. He fingers do not find cold metal, but instead brush a slip of paper. She pulls it out, flips on the light, and starts to read.

 

Dear Tavros,  
This is all your fault  
xoxoxoxo  
Vriska Serket

It’s short and vicious, meant to cut like everything Vriska does, the sharply barbed creature that she is, but before she has time to contemplate it’s meaning fully there’s a knock at the door. She gets up from atop the covers and answers the door, the bells on her Halloween costume jingling. It’s the campus police. They look her up and down, and turn to a small mowhawked boy with a black eye.

“Is this her?”

He shakes his head, and they turn to Kanaya.

“We’re looking for one Vriska Serket. You wouldn’t happen to know where she is, would you?”

“Um, she’s in the bath, I think. Want me to fetch her?”

She scuttles over to the bathroom door and knocks, once, twice, hands practically vibrating with nervousness. This isn’t the first time she’s spoken to the police on Vriska’s behalf. There’s no answer.

“Um, she’s not answering.”

“Tell her she’s under suspicion for battery, and if she does not unlock the door it will be considered resisting arrest.”

Kanaya does. Still no answer. The cop procures a key from somewhere in her vest, and unlocks the door.

Kanaya steps in and falls out of love with her in one brutal second.

The bathtub’s overflowing steadily onto the floor in sloshing waves, red waves. There’s blood everywhere, running in watery rivulets along the bathroom floor. Lying in the center of the disaster is Vriska, spread out like Jesus Christ with her wrists slit, eyes shut and a wicked grin on her face. Everything clicks. The cops, the boy, the letter, everything. She throws up. The boy, Tavros, starts crying, high pitched and pitiful, while the cops call for an ambulance.

The cop’s taken off her shirt and is using it as a tourniquet, and Vriska’s still smiling that terrible smile, looking out with eyes wide shut at the chaos she’s created. Kanaya retches. The ambulance is here, and they’re bandaging Vriska’s wrists and putting her on a stretcher like she’s the victim, like this isn’t one last feral swipe at the world she feels has wronged her.

Kanaya stares at her, tries to feel pity, tries to imagine visiting her in the ward they’ll put her in, tries to imagine visiting her in jail when that’s over. And then she thinks of the boy with the black eye and how Vriska knew, she knew she’d be found alive, knew she’d live. And she can’t feel pity she can’t feel anything. For the first time since eighth grade she is without a ward.

 

When Vriska’s sent to a mental hospital, they give Kanaya a new roommate, a girl from solitary who’s yet to move in. She spends her time clearing out all of Vriska’s things in between classes and staring at her cell phone. She’s been reading “Vampire Sorority,” typically while she should be sleeping. Her Fashion project is falling into disarray. She does not feel guilty. She doesn’t.

There’s a girl, in her book, named Carmen. She’s a vampire’s feeder, with a dead mother and an abusive father, and Kanaya loves her, feels safe loving her until she poisons her blood to escape her vampire. There was nothing wrong with the vampire, as far as Kanaya could tell. She took care of her feeders. What an ungrateful bitch.

She gives up on the book and goes to try to scrub the bathroom again.

She does not feel guilty.

 

There are three knocks on the door before it swings open. It’s Dave, this time in jeans, clutching a large box in his big spidery hands.

“Yo, roommate delivery for one Ms. Kanaya Maryam.”

He steps in uninvited, all long spindly legs and exaggerated swagger, revealing the girl behind him. It’s Rose, Rose who thought she was vomiting eggs, except now she’s standing straight in a black lace dress, all white gold with her translucent skin and flaxen hair and black-rimmed violet eyes. She looks like a porcelain doll, like she should be kept on a shelf somewhere old and rotting, but she’s standing in the middle of Kanaya’s dorm in doc martens. She offers her doll-hand with a tiny, unknowable smile on her little black-painted lips.

“I’m Rose Lalonde. I do believe we’ve met.”

Kanaya takes the hand between two of her sweaty own, shaking it firmly.

“Kanaya Maryam.”

“So I’ve been informed.”

“What do you say we start over fresh, clean slate and all?”

“I’d be overjoyed.”

Dave walks in-between their clasped hands.

“A break from the Sapphic dalliances to help us actually move the fuck in, please.”

Kanaya sighs and goes to start moving boxes.

 

Rose Lalonde decorates her entire side of the dorm with posters of kittens and eldritch abominations, slapping little glow-in-the-dark googly eyes on them that point in Kanaya’s direction. 

Rose Lalonde only takes night classes.

Rose Lalonde is not a drunken bimbo living only for the next party, as Kanaya would’ve thought. Instead, Rose Lalonde maintains perfect grades while double majoring in Psych and English and minoring in Biology.

Rose Lalonde is not sexy like Vriska was sexy, boxers and tangled hair and a t-shirt with no bra kind of sexy, but she is beautiful in the way broken glass is beautiful, all tiny with sharp, glistening edges.

Rose Lalonde is incredibly disorganized and has a locked box under her bed and every night she locks herself in the bathroom for four hours with the shower on, and Kanaya presses herself to the door and listens.

They do not talk for the first week, except to find more and more contrived ways to passive-aggressively tell each other to buy milk. They do not talk, in fact, until Rose catches her staring at her phone again.

“There’s help for that, you know. People.”

Kanaya glares. She doesn’t know shit. Rose just smiles like she’s all-seeing, little black rosebud mouth parting to reveal too many shiny white teeth.

“I know more than you think.”

She’s purring like the cat that caught the cream, and in that moment, she’s the ugliest thing Kanaya’s ever seen. She continues.

“Vriska Serket, troubled youth extraordinaire, finally decides to ask out Tavros Nitram. When he says no, she decides, ‘well shit I’d better try to beat him to death.’ He head-butts her, makes his grand escape, and runs for the cops with a black eye and a handprint around his throat. Vriska panics, realizes she’s going to jail just like everyone said she would, and in a split second decision gets herself sent to the nuthouse the only way she knows how. Oh, and you were so far gone on her it isn’t even funny. Or were you less in love with her and more in love with how needy she was? How desperate? How she’d always come crying to you when she fucked up yet again because she knew momma Kanaya could fix it? Oh, I do think I’ve hit the nail right on the head, haven’t I?

Kanaya is sitting very still, back stiff.

“What the hell do you want, you bumptious little bitch?”

She breaks out into a smile, a real one, shining and bright, and Kanaya wants to tear her face off.

“Coffee.”

Kanaya blinks.

“You didn’t think you were the only one who loved a good tragedy, did you?”

“How the hell do you know all this?”

There’s that smile again, peeking out like the sun from behind clouds.

“I know people.”

 

They get coffee the next day. 

It turns out that Rose has Opinions about H.P. Lovecraft, capitol O. according to her, everything he wrote would be improved if he’d just develop his character voices. Kanaya thinks everything he wrote would be improved if someone who wasn’t a racist dickbag wrote it. They do not talk about Vriska Serket, and Rose writes notes in Latin on her napkin. They’re probably the start of a psychological profile, but Kanaya can’t bring herself to care.

 

They go out for drinks with Dave later that week. The bartender doesn’t even bother with their ids, Rose and Dave due to familiarity, and Kanaya because she’s so damn tall. Rose always wears black and studs and lace, all carefully selected to make her as unapproachable as possible, but tonight she’s wearing a dress that’s orange and too short to even cover her underwear. Before Kanaya’s even in the door she’s got a drink in her hand and is grinding up against strangers, laughing with her head thrown back and her neck bared the way the real Rose never would. Kanaya wants to drag her out of here, rebuild her barriers, cover her up and hide her and make her cruel again, but Dave doesn’t seem to share the same qualms, grinding up against her and laughing when she whips around, grabbing his leather-clad butt and smirking, leaning in too close for sibling propriety. 

There’s a circle formed around them, cheering their names as they contort themselves into seemingly more impossible positions and Kanaya wants to scream that this is wrong, this isn’t Rose, but she’s done dancing now and is buying a third drink and a fourth and a sixth until Dave’s cutting her off and they’re out on the street again, Kanaya in tow.

She’s not as drunk as before by half. This time instead of retching silence, she’s rambling, Dave frantically shushing her and stroking her hair. She grabs his wrist with very un-drunk precision and strokes his tattoo. He tries to pull away but she’s strong, freakishly so, with tiny fingers white knuckling round his bony wrist. She jabs at the inky house like a ferocious child, all scrunched-up forehead and wide fierce eyes.

“Do you see this. Do you fucking see this?”

She hiccups.

“Well look at it. It’s another goddamn success story written by Rose Lalonde. Wouldn’t mommy be proud.”

Dave looks near tears.

“Rose, Rose, please shut up, please just don’t speak right now you’re really fucking sick and don’t know what you’re saying. Please just be a good girl for once, alright?”

He holds up a finger to her mouth, and she leans over and bites it, sniggering drunkenly, and Kanaya feels like a voyeur, feels like there’s something she’s missing the way she always does when she’s around those two.

“I am a good girl. I’m always a good girl, see?”

She leans over and kisses his tattoo, and finally he jerks his hand away.

“C’mon you drunk bitch. Let’s get you home.”

 

There is no real explanation the next morning. Instead, Rose just groans when Kanaya opens the blinds, and when she refuses to give her water until she tells her what the hell last night was all about, she barely manages to groan out “My meds and alcohol don’t like each other.” before she’s out cold again.

Kanaya goes to English Lit and ponders exactly how little she knows about Rose Lalonde.

 

When she gets back, her phone’s sitting in the middle of her bed like a gauntlet and Rose is staring her down while she stares down her phone.

“Why don’t you call her, or at least check your damn messages? Is it because you’re afraid the second you hear her voice all tired and worn out, you’re going to forget everything she’s ever done and fall straight back in love? Or should I say duty, because that’s all it is. To call that love is to besmirch its very name.”

Kanaya’s never been a violent person before, but she’s seriously contemplating decapitating her with a pair of hedge trimmers. 

“Fine; I’ll check the damn phone.”

She stomps off into the bathroom, phone in hand, and turns the sink on. Her phone blinks ominously up at her as she turns it on. Before she can lose her nerve, she opens up her voicemail.

“Whattup, bitch, it’s Vriska. They gave me a cell phone and I didn’t even have to blow the guard, isn’t that the fucking greatest thing you’ve ever heard. Anyway, they still think I’m nuts ‘cause they got ahold of my record, and that’s got the incident with the cat on it. And they refuse to stop talking about my mother. Seriously, if I hear the word antisocial thrown around one more time imma punch someone out.”

“Yo, Kanaynay, you know who it is. Tavros dropped the charges, isn’t that just the best damn thing?”

“It’s your overlord speaking. Everybody here is really fuckin weird, but that’s kinda obvious, isn’t it. Anyway, there’s this one chick that got busted by her parents for going on this site called Sburb, and I need you to check it out for me. Seriously, I gotta know what the hell’s so bad it gets you sent to the nuthouse just for looking.”

There’s no rush of affection Kanaya feared, no sudden wave of duty. She writes down the name of the site and prepares herself to forget all about it. She leaves the bathroom and returns to “Vampire Sorority, ” ignoring Rose’s pointed looks.  
Kanaya Maryam falls in love the same day Rose’s Mom comes to visit. She wafts in reeking of expensive perfume and even more expensive wine, shrieking and pinching at Rose’s face with exaggerated vigor.

“Hello, Mother.”

Her mother ignores her sulky tone, eyes alighting on Kanaya with delight.

“Oh, darling, you’ve got to introduce me to your little friend!”

“This is Kanaya. She’s a lesbian.“

Rose’s mom refuses to be scandalized. “So are you, sweetheart.”

Rose seems taken aback, and then breaks out in a devious smirk.

“Exactly.”

Rather than distressed, Rose’s mom seems delighted. “Is she your girlfriend? Oh, Rosie, you should’ve told me.”

Finally, Kanaya pipes in. “Um, actually, I’m not.”

“Well that’s just a crying shame. You seem perfectly lovely. Rosie here never seems to date nice girls like you, though. Why, the last one, her dog tried to eat Jaspers!”

“Jaspers?”

Rose groans. “He used to be our cat.”

“Used to be?”

“Someone overfed him.”

Rose’s Mom’s cell phone rings.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, sweetie. Mommy’s gotta go!”

She disappears in a whirl of scarves, leaving a cloud of discomfort in her wake. Rose throws a pillow at her retreating back.

“That bitchy lush, thinking she can just show up whenever she damn well pleases, like I have to conform my time to her whims!”

“You do realized you weren’t actually doing anything, right?”

“I could’ve been.”  
“You never are.”

Rose laughs at that, laughs high and cruel and sharp without an ounce of humor. She walks over to her bed and reaches under it for the bottle of Vodka she keeps under there.

“Drink with me.”

 

A half an hour later, Rose starts putting on perfume. This year, for her birthday, her mom gave her a bottle of Tom Ford Black Orchid perfume, and she begins spraying it on herself with gusto. She grabs a bottle of makeup remover off of the counter and gestures to Kanaya.

“Come take my makeup off for me.”

Kanaya, dumbfounded, does. She takes the little cloth and drags it over Rose’s eyelids, watching as the caked mascara comes off in layers with fascination. She swipes it over her jet-black lips, staring as her mouth opens and her tongue peeks out from between her teeth. She looks even paler without her makeup, washed-out rather than stark, and much, much smaller.

“Put your makeup on me.”

Finally, Kanaya’s startled out of her silence. “Why?”

“Make me look respectable.”

Kanaya does. She doesn’t bother with foundation, knowing her swarthy skin and Rose’s pallor are on completely different spectrums. Instead, she uses mattefying powder, dabbing it on Rose’s skin with a sponge until her skin looks almost human. She goes heavy on the blush, trying to strip her skin of its sallowness. Finally comes the lipstick, a shade of dusky rose swept over her full lips. A dab of bronzer on her eyelids, and she spins Rose around to face the mirror. Rose looks on, face placid.

“How do I look?”

“Very unlike yourself.”

“Perfect.”

She stands up and slides her headband off. Her shirt soon follows, and Kanaya stares and the expanse of skin, with her small breasts and jutting hipbones, she looks nearly emaciated.

“Heroin chic.”

Rose turns around, halfway through shucking off her pants. “What?”

“Heroin chic. That’s what you are.”

“Not right now I’m not.”

She walks out of the bathroom and stands in the middle of the bedroom in nothing but her underwear, and Kanaya’s breath catches. She’s stunning in the way poets are, all frail and wasting away. It’s her favorite kind of pretty.

Rose rummages through her closet, pulling something pink and lacy she usually pairs with fishnets and combat boots out of the back. She slides it on, and pulls on plain black tights to match.

“See? Proper. Not heroin chic in the slightest.”

She points to Kanaya. “Now put on something nice and puke in the toilet. We’re going to see my mother.”

“Where the hell does she live?”

“Upstate New York. It’s about a twelve-hour drive. So what do you say; will you, Kanaya Maryam, take me, Rose Lalonde, as your fake girlfriend, to Snob City, New York, to piss off my mother?”

“What, exactly, will this accomplish?”

“Oh, sweetheart, you just don’t get it, do you?”

“Fine.”

 

Rose Lalonde owns a shiny pink convertible. Her mother had black roses painted on the sides as another birthday present. Rose pretends to hate it, but she takes it out for a spin every Sunday, and now she’s climbing in the driver’s seat with a downright vicious smirk on her face. Kanaya gets in the passenger seat and for the first time all day, thinks of Vriska. They smile the same when they get like this, all manic and loose and free with wicked intentions. 

Rose drives without speaking, top down and wind whipping through her white-gold hair. She also never seems to stop for rest breaks, and Kanaya’s too nervous to ask until hour four.  
“Do you think it’d be possible for us to stop? Just for a second.”

Rose turns and tips her sunglasses down. “How long ’ve we been driving?”

“Four hours, give or take.”

“And how long ‘ve you needed to piss?”

“Four hours, give or take.”

“And why didn’t you ask me to pull over sooner?”

“Just nervous, I guess.”

Rose slides her sunglasses back up her nose and turns her eyes back towards the road.

“You don’t have to be, you know.”

Her knuckles are very, very white around the steering wheel.

“After all, what’s the worst I could do?”

Kanaya isn’t quite sure. She thinks of Vriska.

 

They don’t talk again until hour six.

“Does Dave live with your mother?”

Rose laughs. 

“Dave and I are the product of my very drunk collegiate mother and an even drunker gay high-schooler. When they found out she was having twins, they figured the only right thing to do was split the deal. He lives with his Father, who refuses to be referred to as anything but Bro.”

“Do you wish he lived with your mother?”

She laughs again, humorless and high. “That takes some balls, trying to psychoanalyze me.”

Ten minutes later, she’s fast asleep, and Kanaya is left alone in the car with a fancy GPS and her thoughts.  
Rose’s Mom keeps her keys under the mat like they do in every movie, Rose fishes them out with a wiggle of her hips and a girlish giggle, smirking back over her shoulder at Kanaya. 

“She’s gonna be so effing pissed.”

There’s nobody home, but Rose just shrugs and heads for the liquor cabinet. She pulls out a bottle of Jack and crows. 

“Oh, sweet baby, I missed you so.”

She turns to Kanaya, face childish and bright, and waves the bottle in her face.

“ I tried to drink out of it when I was 7 and chipped my tooth. My mom now refuses to throw it out.”

She takes a sip out of it and coughs. 

“She just keeps refilling it.”

Another sip.

“I fucking hate whiskey.”

She hands the bottle to Kanaya, and stares expectantly until she takes a sip. She pats Kanaya on the back while she coughs, and smiles sympathetically.

“You aren’t much of a drinker, are you?”

“You’re too much of one.”

“Yes, I am. Is it because you were raised Muslim?”

Kanaya turns and stares.

“Are you psychic, or just being racist?”

“Possibly a little of both.”

“You little bitch.”

Rose takes the Jack back and takes another gagging swig, bird-wrists sagging under the weight of the bottle.

“Is your mother an alcoholic?”

“Congrats on being the least observant person on the planet.”

They don’t talk much, after that, but Kanaya sits and stares at the prominent line of her spine as she drinks and contemplates hugging her before deciding against it.

 

It’s not even thanksgiving yet, but they watch a Christmas movie while they wait for Rose’s Mom. Rose evidentially has an order for these sorts of movies, and they’re all lined up on the shelves. The first one’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but she skips over it with a worried glance at Kanaya. 

“I’m fine. Let’s watch it.”

Rose skips it anyway, and moves on to “Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer.”

When Rudolph prances across the screen, squealing, “She thinks I’m cute!” she turns to Kanaya.

“Do you think I’m cute?”

She flutters her clumped eyelashes sarcastically.

“Downright adorable.”

Rose sniggers, cheeks flushed with booze. Kanaya notices.

“You’re drunk. How the hell are you drunk?”

“If you drink while on an SSRI, the effects of alcohol are doubled.”

She goes a little pink.

“Oops!”

She cackles, and sprawls out on the couch, feet in Kanaya’s lap.

“Grab me a smoke.”

“No.”  
“Excellent. I think you’ll do well with drunk me.”

She smiles and flips herself over so her head is in Kanaya’s lap.

 

Six hours later and Rose’s mom’s phone is still off, and they’ve chugged their way through the bottle of Jack and two more movies, and Rose is getting antsy.

“Where the hell is the dumb bitch?”

She’s shaking and slurring by now, leaning heavily on Kanaya’s shoulder. Kanaya leans into her, simply relishing the sensation.

“Put in another movie, Rose.”

She does, swaying and fumbling and chipping her black nail polish on the DVD player as she puts in “Little Drummer Boy.” The opening music starts. The phone rings. Rose answers before Kanaya can tell her to just leave it be.

Ten seconds later, she slams the phone down, never saying a word. She leans back against Kanaya and pauses the movie. She glances up at her with her wide, unblinking violet eyes and smiles a smile, a new kind of smile, sad and small and wobbling at the little black corners.

“Kanaya.”

Kanaya looks down. Rose leans up. Their lips meet clumsily in the middle, chaste and quick and drunkenly imprecise. Rose pulls away, leans her head back on Kanaya’s shoulder and unpauses the movie.

Kanaya doesn’t catch a second of the movie. She also doesn’t think about Vriska, with her scarred body and her wild, cruel eyes and her unbrushed mess of snarled black hair, locked up in some nuthouse with scars on her wrists and a victorious smirk on her face.

Rose snores softly. 

 

She can’t sleep, not with Rose ice-cold and alive and sleeping on her shoulder, so she turns on the news and lets the tragedy wash over her. There’s a plane crash in upstate New York, and she wonders if any of Rose’s Mother’s neighbors, in their nice houses with their fancy cars, have just lost something they can’t replace. She wonders if any of them are pretty girls with sad eyes and thin wrists and broken hearts. She wonders how many of them are going to turn feral and cruel and break bottles on the sides of their houses to threaten away well-wishers. She wonders how many of them, those poor, distraught, imaginary girls, she could love.

 

Rose wakes up at around three a.m. with a jolt that wakes Kanaya and runs to the bathroom. When Kanaya arrives in the bathroom, Rose is doubled over the toilet, retching and heaving. Kanaya brushes her hair out of her face while she gags, the smell of booze and stomach acid wafting up from the bowl. 

When she’s done, she’s shaking and her eyes are wide and bloodshot, and she leans over, peers at the vomit, and bursts into tears.

“There are eggs.”

She curls herself up into a ball like a child, mascara running down her face as she sobs. 

“I threw up the eggs. They’re going to kill me.”

Kanaya glances around, panicked. Gradually, she extends one long hand and touches Rose’s shoulder. She flinches.

“They aren’t going to kill you.”

Rose covers her mouth, eyes bulging, staring straight at Kanaya.

“I’m so sorry.”

She stops crying and gets up, still shaking and wipes her face off in the bathroom mirror. When she turns back around, she looks perfectly composed, except for her reddened eyes.

“Let’s go home.”

She looks positively tiny, still shaking like she’s coming apart and Kanaya wants to rip her apart and sew her back together.

“Do you want me to drive?”

“Yes please.”

 

When they get back, Dave is breaking into their dorm with a bobby pin. He whips around when he hears them approach and launches himself at Rose, wrapping her in a too-tight embrace.

“Fuck, I though… shit Rose you know what I thought. I came when I heard the news and you wouldn’t open the door and shit, where were you?”

She gently pries him off of her, stroking his wrist soothingly.

“You know I wouldn’t. I just went to visit mother.”

He looks puzzled. 

“But they haven’t even found the body yet.”

Rose shushes him but it’s too late. Kanaya’s staring with realization dawning on her face. Dave notices and glares down at Rose. 

“Or has my darling glacier of a sister not told you yet? Our mother died last night. Plane crash, ya know.”

Rose glowered.

“It’s none of her concern and you know it.”

“You’re the dumbest bitch in the galaxy. If it’s your concern, it’s your creepy clingy roommate’s concern. Did you drink? Of course you fucking did. Probably got fucking wasted, and you know how well that interacts with your meds. Bet you made an ass out of yourself again. You know you can’t do that, Rose, you can’t.”

Kanaya walks towards them all tangled up in each other like conjoined twins and gently pries them apart, wrapping her arms around Rose and holding her tightly, tighter than Dave did, and waits for her to burst into tears like Vriska would. The tears don’t come, and Rose doesn’t raise up her little arms and wrap them around Kanaya. Instead she stands stock-still and lets Kanaya hold her, but doesn’t lean in, doesn’t take any comfort from the action. Slowly, Kanaya pulls back.

 

Rose works like a girl possessed for the next few days, locking herself in the bathroom all night with nothing but the click-clack of her keyboard telling Kanaya that she’s still alive. She always emerges with black circles under her eyes and a tired smile, and every day Kanaya asks the same thing.

“What’re you doing?”

Rose always gives the same answer.

“Writing a novel.”

She drinks more, too, curling up socially to a sleepy Kanaya and carding her shaking hands through her hair playfully and calling her baby. Kanaya feels like, somehow, she’s cemented her place in Rose’s life by witnessing these moments. She loves Rose drunk and touchy-feely after she leaves the bathroom and hits the bottle, but loves her better the morning after, shaking and puking and halfway to tears. There’s just something so intimate about bearing witness to someone else’s agony, something that lets her slip in-between their fresh cracks and stay there.

They kiss once more, but only when Rose is blind drunk, and they never talk about it the next day.

They watch Christmas Movies over the weekends, when Rose isn’t in the bathroom, and while Rose tries to break out the booze again, something occurs to Kanaya.

“Do you drink to feel closer to your mother?”

Rose just glares. Kanaya decides then and there to get Rose to stop drinking.

 

Kanaya’s cell phone goes off at 3 am for the third time in a row, Rap music blaring to indicate that it’s Vriska, when Rose finally snaps.

“Next Saturday, we’re going to visit the sorry bitch.”

 

True to form, Rose wakes her up bright and early, Doc Martens already on her feet and a cruel smile on her face.

“Rise and shine, sweetheart. We’re going to visit the bitch.”

Kanaya groans.

“She tried to throttle a man when he wouldn’t date her, and then attempted suicide to get him to drop the charges. How, exactly, does that warrant visiting?”

“Because you love monsters like her, don’t you. It’s practically a fetish. It’s always these mad-eyed dangerous girls with broken families and stiff spines that just really need someone like you in their life. A mother figure, really. In fact, I’d say you have some sick, twisted form of a Jocasta complex if I didn’t know for a fact that you…”

“Shut the hell up and help me find some clothes.”

 

Betty’s Psychiatric Ward for Girls is about a half-hour’s drive into the city, and it’s a quaint-looking little place, all white-dried stone and wooden balconies and a little molded doorknob. It might even pull off the look, if it weren’t for the barbed-wire fence surrounding the whole affair. They have to be buzzed in, with Rose’s pink convertible stalling in front of the gates as she talks into the intercom. The gates open with a creaking noise.

They walk up to the door and before they can grasp the little mermaid knocker it swings open, a plump little lady with bright blue eyes and short black hair standing behind it with a warm, bucktoothed smile on her face. The smile immediately widens as she takes in Rose, and she leans forward to hug her, Kanaya standing awkwardly out of the way. 

“Rose Lalonde! I haven’t seen you in ages! How’s University treating you.”

“Fantastically, thank you.”

She steps back and gestures towards Kanaya.

“Mrs. Crocker, this is my roommate, Kanaya Maryam.”

Mrs. Crocker smirks.

“You always did like ‘em tall dark and handsome.”

“Your son is shorter than her, and was a phase.”

They both laugh.

“Come in, come in, you’re here to see…Vriska, right. Mm-hmm, that one’s a mess, she won’t be leaving here for a while. She leans in conspiratorially. 

“Mommy issues out the wazoo, you see.”

Rose elbows Kanaya and smirks.

“And who’s she dangerous to?”

“Everybody. She’s in solitary, but we’ve allowed her a computer, just to shut her up.”

They arrive at the living room, all decorated in doilies and floral couches. There are residents lounging about, playing cards, and if it weren’t for the uniforms, it would almost seem normal.

“These are the unconfined patients. They have group therapy sessions daily.”

She waves to a little Asian girl with a long, flowing mess of hair and a distant look on her face. The girl doesn’t wave back.

“Cotard’s Syndrome. She thinks she’s dead.”

“What’ve you got her on?”

“A rotation of antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotics. Oh, and we’ve started on electroconvulsive.”

“How’s she responded?”

“Well we’ve just started yesterday, so it’s hard to say. She was supposed to be laid up in bed all day, but she insisted on coming down here. She’s not a danger to anyone though. She just refuses to shut up about the apocalypse is all. I’m seriously thinking of reconfining her. I think she brings the morale of the rest of them down.”

They leave the living room and walk up a flight of stairs. There are paintings lining the halls of the upstairs hall, all of them carefully pleasant, but otherwise, it has the over-sanitized feel of a hospital hall. There’re slash marks through one of the paintings, like someone had dragged their fingernails across it. Mrs. Crocker tuts.

“That’d be your Vriska; feisty little thing that she is.”

She knocks on one of the doors before pulling a key out of her skirt pocket and unlocking it.

“Vriska, sweetheart, your friends are here to see you.”

Vriska looks up. Her hair is even longer than before, a windswept mess of waves, but her eyes are duller, glassy and dead behind her glasses. She stares right past Kanaya and directly at Rose.

“Who the fuck is she?”

She turns to Kanaya. 

“Did you get yourself a bitch, Maryam?”

Rose smiles, eyes shut in that Stepford way she has.

“My name’s Rose Lalonde; I’m Kanaya’s new roommate. And I’m nobody’s bitch.” 

She stretches out one little hand and Vriska takes it between two of her own, crushing it in her grip. Rose, to her credit, doesn’t flinch, simply crooks her finger and digs one black nail into the tender flesh of Vriska’s palm. Vriska recoils with a hiss. She bares her teeth, clutching her hand to her chest.

“Pleasure to meet you, bitch.”

“I prefer to think of myself as a replacement for defective goods, if you don’t mind.”

“Well I do.” 

Mrs. Crocker glances around. 

“Well, I’ll bring you ladies down to the visiting room. I won’t be in the room, but remember, I’ll be watching over the video cameras, so no funny business.”

She chuckles, and walks out of the room, the rest of them following. She leads them down the hall to a small room with a coffee table and two fluffy floral couches, rank with powdery perfume. She holds the door open, and they all file in. 

“Have fun, girls!”

She shuts the door behind her with a click.

Vriska flings herself down onto one of the couches, spreading her legs and taking up the whole couch. Rose and Kanaya take the opposite couch.

Vriska smiles too wide.

“Did ya check out that site I told you about?”

“No, why? Do you still need me to? I thought you had a computer now.”

“I do, I just think you’d like it. All the freaks with computers over here are on it. Whatever, I’ll email it to you. Anyway, how is he?”

“Who?”

“Dearest darling Tavros, of course. The bastard who sent me here.”

“I hate to break it to you, but you sent yourself here.”

“Necessary measures, made necessary by him.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that you wouldn’t be facing assault charges if you didn’t assault someone?”

Vriska rolls her eyes.

“Why no, mom, it never occurred to me. What a brilliant conclusion you’ve come to. Maybe, if Vriska weren’t a stupid bitch, she wouldn’t be stuck in the nuthouse with a million freaks of nature. Gosh, what a shocker”

Rose smiles.

“You know, I’m starting to think that this was a good idea.”

Vriska glares. 

“Wow, the bitch can think. Shocker.”

“You see, anyone whose first response to being shut down is to strangle the guy clearly belongs here. Plus, it might give you an opportunity to work out what darling mummy did to you.”

Vriska leaps to her feat.

“Fuck you, and fuck the hole you crawled out of. What the hell do you know, you ugly little bitch.”

“Aw, is little Vriska afraid big, bad, mumsie is gonna come back. Do you still know how to shoot a gun, Vriskers? Know how to shoot a gun for when the commies come?”

Vriska whirls around, looking for something sharp, but the room has been carefully stripped of any potential weapons. She grips the table, but it’s been nailed to the floor.

“You bitch, you bitch, you bitch! Who told you?”

She whirls on Kanaya, eyes finally alight with the fire she knows so well.

“Did you tell her, you ugly slut? That’s so fucking like you, blabbing all over the place to the first person willing to touch you. You desperate little whore!”

She rips a pillow off the couch and whips it at them, right as Mrs. Crocker bursts through the door. As Rose and Kanaya exit, Vriska whips one last pillow at them.

“You’re damn right I know how to shoot a gun, bitch. I could hit you from a mile away, and you wouldn’t even see it coming.”

The door slams shut, but Vriska can still be heard.

“Or maybe I won’t shoot you, bitch. I won’t even kill you. That’s all you want, isn’t it, selfish bitch like yourself? I know your type. All’s you want is to make people cry at your funeral. Well you know what, bitch? When you die, you’re gonna do it dry-eyed and alone, and I won’t be there to help you along. Do you hear me, bitch? This is the mark of Cain! Not even the worms will fucking touch your corpse.”

They run outside and slam the door behind them.

 

Every day after that she gets an email from Vriska, containing a single link, simply titled “SBURB.” She never clicks it, and never replies. 

Rose locks herself in the bathroom over the weekend with a pile of Power Bars and an empty cup. She doesn’t turn the shower on, though, and Kanaya stands vigilant, clinging to every clack of the keyboard like it’s a message from god. 

Dave visits on Sunday, only to be greeted by a frantic Kanaya at the door.

“What the hell’s she doing in there?”

“Chill, chill, she’s got a job, she’s got a job online, she’s just working.”

“What sort of job?”

“That’s up to her to tell you.”

“She’s not a camgirl, is she? Please tell me she isn’t.”

“Dude, she just inherited her mother’s millions. Do you really think she’s stripping for money?”

“Well I wouldn’t know, seeing as nobody will tell me anything!”

Dave throws up his hands in surrender.

“Jesus H Christ I came here to help, not to be assaulted.”

“What sort of help?”

“Rose said you needed a model for the dress you’re supposed to be making instead of creeping on my sister.”

“You’re a guy.”

“It’ll get the teacher’s attention. C’mon, Rose said you’ve gotta, quote unquote, ‘design a dress for a model of your choice, in order to learn about custom designing.’ It’ll be fun, I pinky-promise.”

He grabs a sketchbook off her desk and shoves it at her, raising the pinky of his other hand. Reluctantly, Kanaya takes the sketchbook, and wraps her pinky around his. Dave crows victoriously.

“That’s more like it.”

She sits down at her desk and stares. Dave strikes a pose, exaggeratedly sexy, with his flat pointy body attempting to mimic curves. She giggles, but quickly covers it, trying her best to focus. The instructions say to draw inspiration from the model, but nothing’s coming, she doesn’t know Dave well enough; he’s eternally tied up with his sister in her mind. She freezes.

“Dave?”

“Yes?”

“Fuck off.”

Dave fucks off. Kanaya starts to draw.

 

There’s a two-headed monster on the page, elegant and whippet-thin and pulling apart at the seams. There are two floor-length dresses, one red and slinky and sequined with slits up the side and the other one black as pitch with the train spiraling out like tendrils. There are holes up and down the backs of these dresses, like the holes in a corset, and they are held together with black silk ribbon, woven elaborately between their backs. They strain at their bonds, but no matter how fragile it is, that one strand of black keeps them close.

Kanaya isn’t sure if it’ll work. She knocks on the bathroom door. No answer. She knocks again.

“Rose! I need you out here.”

“I’ll be done in half an hour. I’ll be out there then.”

Kanaya sighs down at her sketch and goes back to playing with her colored pencils, highlighting the way their height difference would make their backs lock together. Her teacher is probably going to murder her for it. She wonders what she’ll call it.

 

An hour later Rose steps out, laptop under her arm.

“What did you need?”

“Uh, I wanted to show you a sketch.”

She leans over and hands Rose her sketchpad. Rose studies it, worrying her lip between her teeth, eyes narrowed.

“Kanaya, it’s beautiful, but if you do it you’ll fail.”

“I know, I just wanted to show it to you.”

“Well, thank you for that. It really is lovely. What do you call it?”

“Codependence.”

Rose’s face goes carefully blank.

“I see. Well, thank you again for showing it to me.”

She walks out, and Kanaya carefully crumples up her sketch and lobs it at the trashcan.

 

The emails from Vriska don’t stop, and she wants to click them, she really does, and some small part of her wants to steal Rose’s car and drive right up to Betty’s and scream for Vriska to hop in and just drive and drive and drive until they get somewhere, and another part wants to do the exact same thing but with a gun. So she’s stuck at a stalemate, not sure if she wants to love her or kill her, and so she does nothing.

She keeps drawing, takes a photo of Dave and tapes it up at her workstation, much to Rose’s amusement. She made him take off his sunglasses, and he’s squinting at the camera. The girls in her class who see it think she’s got a boyfriend, and she’s happy to let them assume if it means they leave her alone.

She keeps a photo of Rose at her workstation too, a little more hidden from sight.

She’s glaring at the camera, and missing the usual heavy makeup, having just dragged herself through one of her all-night “working’ sessions, and she’s got big, black circles under her violently violet eyes. She looks very exhausted, and very human.

 

Kanaya draws a red dress like Jessica Rabbit’s next, and then draws a black dress, with a plunging mesh-covered v and a tight corset. The dress flows down to his feet, melting into an upside-down flower. What she loves best of all are the shoulders, though, covered in hundreds of tiny black roses, each one punctured by a silver spike. She contemplates calling it “every Rose has its thorn.”

Ultimately, she decides on “self-defense.” She does not show Rose the dress.

 

Vriska begins texting her the link. She puts her phone on silent permanently.

 

The dress takes a surprisingly short amount of time to make, thanks to the local crafts store selling little cloth roses easily dyed black, as well as spikes. She drops the corset idea, thinking about how strange it would be to see the curve of Rose’s waist framed against Dave’s narrow hips. 

She misses two calls from her mother because of her silent phone.

 

The next time Rose is neither in the bathroom or in class, she catches Kanaya staring at her vibrating phone. She starts to walk into the bathroom.

“If by the time I get out you haven’t checked your goddamn email I swear to god I will shit on your sewing machine.”

She closes the door behind her with a resounding thud. Kanaya sighs and reaches for her computer.

 

There are no apologies, as is to be expected from Vriska. Instead there are only links, and the occasional comment of ‘click this!’

She clicks a link.

 

The link leads to a black screen. As Kanaya watches, letters begin appearing on her screen as if typed in a chatlog,

Do You Want To Die?  
Yes No  
She clicks “No.”

Volunteer for tentacleTherapist?  
Yes No

Once again, she clicks “No”

What the hell are you doing here, you sick fuck? 

The page exits out of itself. She goes back to her email, curious, and clicks the link again.

Do You Want To Die?  
Yes No

This time, she clicks yes. A buffering sign immediately appears.

Now generating screen name.

You will be called  
grimAuxiliatrix

Would you like to learn more about SBURB, grimAuxiliatrix?  
Yes No  
She clicks yes yet again.

SBURB is a program for the suicidal, created by tentacleTherapist, who holds the belief that no one truly wants to die. If you wish to test this belief, tentacleTherapist will first meet with you personally, and then put you through a series of group therapy sessions. If, in a month, you still want to die, you will be granted access to the large screen you will see in a moment. If you actually do kill yourself, or attempt to kill yourself, the entire program will be shut down. As you are seeing this script, no participant has so much as attempted suicide. So, ask yourself 

Do you still want to die?  
Yes No

Despite herself, she wants to continue. She chooses yes.

Your meeting with tentacleTherapist will begin as soon as she is available. Please do not exit this page.

A black screen appears on the computer. 

Kanaya spend the next twenty minutes processing information. Evidentially, there was some whackjob out there who liked to play Russian roulette with the lives of the depressed. She wants to meet them the same way that one would want to meet one’s soul mate, desperately, albeit with more immediacy. She does not exit out of the screen.

Words appear on the blackness.

TT: So I hear you want to die. Please explain.  
GA: I Don’t  
TT: I was under the impression that the instructions were quite clear.   
TT: Why, then, are you here?  
GA: I’m not quite sure  
TT: That’s not very helpful.  
TT: You do realize you are taking this time away from people who actually need this.  
TT: As such, I will politely tell you to take whatever brought you here and shove it.  
GA: Wait  
GA: I Just Wanted To Speak To You  
GA: Maybe Understand What This Is All About  
GA: I’m Guessing This Is Understaffed  
GA: Since It’s Too Risky To Be Considered Professional People Wouldn’t Be Directed Here  
GA: Well I Have Training As A Suicide Hotline Operator  
GA: And Lots Of Free Time  
GA: I’ll Volunteer To Make Up For Lost Hours If You’ll Just Talk To Me   
TT: Fine.  
TT: What Do You Want.  
GA: Tell Me About Yourself  
TT: I’m an anonymous entity. I have no personal information.  
GA: Well Than Why Are You Doing This, Mr. Anonymous Entity  
GA: Is It Ms. Or Mr.  
TT: Technically, I should tell you it’s neither nor.  
TT: But it’s Ms.  
GA: Way To Avoid The First Question, Ms. Anonymous Entity  
TT: I’ve told you, I have no personal information.  
TT: If people start seeing me as a person, it will prove a detriment to the job.  
GA: Well Fortunately You Won’t Be Performing Your Job On Me  
TT: Someone close to me attempted suicide.  
TT: I talked them out of it.  
GA: Why Not Just Become A Suicide Hotline Operator Then If You’re So Good At Talking People Off The Ledge  
TT: I did.  
TT: But there were people who called night after night, but couldn’t afford to leave home to get the care they needed.  
TT: So I set up this site, where people can come on every day at any time.  
TT: And they do come back, and they never kill themselves.  
TT: I consider myself to be doing the work of the gods.  
GA: Gods  
TT: Just a turn of phrase.  
TT: So, why did you need to talk to me so badly you were willing to offer up your services in exchange?  
GA: I’ve Been Told I Have A Fetish For The Deranged  
TT: The majority of people on here only suffer from depression.  
GA: Close Enough  
TT: Not really. If you plan to work for me, you’d better at least figure out how to figure out what’s wrong with your patients.  
GA: Fine  
GA: A Fetish For The Miserable  
GA: Is That Better  
TT: That sounds fetching, and also somewhat perfect.  
TT: That is, assuming you help them, rather than bring them further misery.  
GA: I Do Help  
GA: I’m Not A Terrible Person You Know  
TT: I don’t. That’s the problem.  
GA: What Problem  
TT: I abhor volunteers.  
GA: A Necessary Evil I Take It  
TT: I’m exposing potentially malicious unknowns to incredibly fragile people. Necessary evil doesn’t even begin to cover it.  
GA: But You Need Them To Serve Everyone  
TT: Essentially.  
TT: I’d rather take risks than turn people away.  
TT: And I can’t run it all myself of course.  
TT: I am only human.  
GA: Of Course  
GA: You Can Trust Me  
TT: That’s reassuring.

The words fade into black, and a screen appears on the monitor again. She’s strangely relieved by its blankness.

She goes back to the opening screen.

Do You Want To Die?  
Yes No  
She selects no.

Volunteer for tentacleTherapist?  
Yes No  
This time, she chooses yes.

It appears you already have a screen name.  
Welcome, grimAuxilitrix, to the SBURB staff 

The screen goes black again.

Your first shift is tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. Eastern standard time. If you are not available then, please select another time.

10:00 p.m. Tuesday  
9:30 a.m. Wednesday  
5:45 p.m. Wednesday  
12:30 p.m. Thursday  
11:00 P.m. Thursday

If you are available at 6:00 p.m. eastern standard time, please click  
Continue

She clicks continue, and the words wash off the screen, replaced by a green house, built from four blocks and a triangle. She gets ready for class, and contemplates the color purple.

 

Dave tries on the dress in secret while Rose is still in the bathroom. He steps in, and, when Kanaya motions for him to proceed, starts shucking off his clothes with grandiose, graceless gestures. He’s strangely sexless in his red boxer-briefs and white tube socks, with his jutting hips and his protruding hipbones. Everything about him is an angle, and she’s reminded fiercely of Rose. The only difference is, while Rose is sharp in the way knives are sharp, steely and cold and able to slit a man’s throat, Dave is sharp like shattered glass, fragile and broken and scattered. There’s nothing alluring about him, nothing to draw her in and make her want to nestle in his crevices. He’s already been stitched back together by someone with a far more precise hand.

She takes the dress out from behind her back and she’s sure his eyes are wide behind his shades.

“Take them off.”

He reaches for his boxer-briefs.

“Not those; your sunglasses.”

He does, yanking them off and placing them on her workstation. She hands him the dress, and he slides into it like water into a glass. He raises his arms above his head, so she can zip up the back, and she sees his tattoo of the house on his wrist, and before he can move she’s stretched up and grabbed his wrist in her hand and she’s holding it up to the light and examining it with one green eye.

The first thing she notices are the scars, carefully disguised with ink, but still noticeable to anyone who looks. There are two of them, clearly deep, and as Dave squawks with protest she trails two fingers along them, ignoring his squirming. She turns to him.

“What do you know about SBURB?”

“I tried to off myself a while ago, ok, but tentacleTherapist helped me out, okay? Now let me go and zip up my goddamn dress.”

He pauses. 

“What the hell are you doing on SBURB?”

“I’m a volunteer.”

“Oh.”

She zips him up. The dress is still too loose around his stomach. Her hand is still viselike around his wrist. The bathroom door creaks open, and Rose emerges with her smudged eyeliner and her laptop folded under her arm. She takes one look at the dress and meets Kanaya’s eyes.

“The gesture is sweet, but I don’t look like that.”

Dave glances at Rose. She nods and leaves the room. Dave motions to his back and Kanaya unzips him. He steps out of the dress and back into his clothes and leaves Kanaya alone in her room, wondering what the hell she’s missing.

Rose wakes up screaming that night, shrieking in some foul, guttural language Kanaya can’t understand and clawing at her covers. She stops the second her eyes snap open, and she lies very still and takes quiet shaky little in-and-out breaths. Kanaya crawls out of her bed and into Rose’s, and Rose lies very still and breathes and does not move while Kanaya holds her close. 

The second Rose is asleep Kanaya calls Dave.

“What the hell is wrong with your sister?”

“Nothing, so long as she takes her pills. Why you asking?”

“Because she woke up screaming in what sounded like Latin.”

“I’ll be right over.”

He shows up in footsy pajamas, panting, and shades askew. By then, rose is composed, her hair brushed and a headband in, this one decorated with little spikes as if to ward off anyone who would dare ruffle her hair. She motions towards the bathroom, and Dave follows her in. Kanaya sits at the door, but the sink’s on and she can’t hear anything but muffled whispers.

When they leave the bathroom, Kanaya’s seated on the bed neat as anything, and Dave and Rose are holding hands. Kanaya feels nauseous again. 

Dave speaks first.

“We’re all good.”

Kanaya blinks, confused.

“What exactly does that mean?”

Rose rolls her eyes. 

“It means I’m a good girl who takes her meds.”

Kanaya doesn’t press any further, and Dave walks out of the room. Rose goes back into the bathroom. Kanaya’s hands start to sweat. Rose emerges with her lipstick on, and she does not look Kanaya in the eye. She pulls on her combat boots, skirt riding up, and Kanaya can’t look at the pale exposed skin at the top of her thighs without wanting to be ill, or even worse, wanting to know, know what goes on in that bathroom and in Rose’s head to make her like this. Rose leaves. Kanaya’s got an hour before her first class. She sighs and starts to sew.

 

After class, Dave comes back, and they do not meet each other’s eyes as he slips on the dress. It fits perfectly. She tells him she’ll be presenting it next week. He leaves, and she hangs it up on the mannequin, and stares, and wonders where the hell she got Rose Lalonde wrong. There’s a niggling itch at the back of her brain and she can’t scratch it, but she claws at her hair anyway. According to her watch, it’s 5:45. She runs back to her dorm, skirt hiked up around her knees.

 

She logs in to SBURB just in time. The first girl shafted her way is called gardenGnostic, and she is trying to recover from the loss of her only guardian. Kanaya is high, she’s exhilarated and she doesn’t even look at the keys as she befriends the girl lightning fast, getting her to talk about her brother and her friends and all the people who’d miss her if she goes. By the end of it, she knows that her name is Jade and she lives in Hawaii and she loves dogs and children’s TV shows and Kanaya is so very hooked.

When she gets off the computer it’s 11, and her phone has one new message. It’s from a private number. It simply says “good job”

 

The next day, when she signs in for SBURB, Jade isn’t there. Instead, there’s a message in purple waiting in her inbox.

TT: SBURB uses gardenGnostic has left SBURB.  
GT: Is That A Good Or A Bad Thing  
TT: Very good.  
TT: It means she is no longer in need of our services.  
TT: The fact that she left so quickly, however, serves as quite the testament to your skills.  
TT: I’ve come to congratulate you.  
GT: Thanks I Guess  
TT: Ok, now that that’s out of the way, I’d like to ask you exactly what you did.  
GT: I Guess I Guilt Tripped Her  
GT: Not In A Bad Way Or Anything  
GT: I Just Gently Reminded Her Of What A Selfish Cowardly Thing To Do It Would Be  
GT: Which You’re Probably Pretty Mad About  
GT: I Also Befriended Her First  
TT: Whatever works, I suppose.  
TT: Be careful though.  
TT: If you fuck up, I will find you.  
tentacleTherapist has left the conversation

 

Kanaya doesn’t have an appointment for another two days. Rose doesn’t talk to her either. She tries calling back tentacleTherapist. She’s presenting her dress next week.

She still hates the dress, because it’s so beautiful with its inverted flower bottom and its razor-sharp silhouette, and Rose won’t accept it, won’t even look at it, and every time Dave puts it on she feels nauseated in the same way she is when she drinks splenda.

Rose, when she’s not in the bathroom, plans her mother’s funeral. She grows increasingly cruel with each new plan, mixing her mother’s ashes with glitter and showering them on the crowd, releasing hornets into the sobbing audience with a malicious smirk on her little doll face. Kanaya wishes she would cry, but the girl’s a glacier, with whatever’s melting hiding below the surface.

Every time Rose locks herself in the bathroom, Kanaya wonders if she’s ever cried, and hates her a little.

She gets another text from a private number. It says “I know who you are.”

 

The quieter Rose gets, the more questions Kanaya asks.

“When did you have your first drink?”

“Why do you like the color purple so much?”

“Has it ever occurred to you that there are more flattering ways to do your makeup?”

“What do you do in the bathroom?”

Rose replies to none but the last. She turns back as she walks into the bathroom, locks eyes with Kanaya, and says 

“Would you still be so fucking obsessed with me if you didn’t think I was gonna kill myself.”

Kanaya doesn’t ask any more questions that day.

 

Kanaya takes a pare of scissors to the midsection of the dress, leaving evenly spaced vertical slashes all around the torso. A strategic revelation of vulnerability, in order to further manipulate, she calls it. She leaves it on its mannequin in the corned of the room, and Rose refuses to rise to the bait.

Dave just grins.

“I’m glad you’ve decided to showcase my abs.”

Kanaya wants to throttle him.

 

She asks Rose one more question before she slips into the bathroom.

“What’s your life goal?”  
“To save everyone.”

Kanaya can’t find a way to add that to the dress.

 

Kanaya Googles SBURB, or, rather, Googles tentacleTherapist. According to the Wikipedia page, it’s a site for those suffering from “Situational Depression, more specifically, depression from the death of a loved one.”

She calls Dave.

“Who died?”

“What the fuck? Who the fuck is this?”

“It’s Kanaya. Answer the question.”

“Lotsa people died. When are you talking about, specifically? ‘cause like 2 seconds ago, some dude in India probably died, except I know exactly jack shit about that. Are you accusing me of murder, Kanaya Maryam? ‘cause I’ve gotta say, I’m kinda flattered.

“Who, close to you, sent you to SBURB by dying?”

“Uh, my brother, but he didn’t send me to SBURB. Rose just kinda helped me out. I volunteer there now.”

“You said tentacleTherapist helped you… Oh.”

Everything clicks into place. She hangs up.

She logs in to SBURB, only instead of being greeted by a blank screen, there are words decorating the screen.

Today, we celebrate the one-month anniversary of the death of one Miss Roxy Lalonde.

The words fall away, and Rose is on screen.


End file.
